Start Me Up

The submissions have started to arrive, so at least I'll have something to work with, and what great first contributions they are, as amiguous as the brief was the contributors have understood perfectly and the first contribution is from photographer Hannah Lorriman who has submitted a startling photographic image divided into a tetraptych focussing on her foot. Whilst intentionally keeping the brief vague to encourage varying responses it never occurred to me that the self portrait needn't be of the face. I love the image and hope the rest of the submissions tackle the brief in a similar creative manner.

My 2nd submission of the day came from Pawel Adamek which featured the artist playing a guitar as a means of exploring his hobbies through the medium of paint.

Staying Legal

In todays Enterprise seminar and subsequent lecture, the issues of Copyright and trademark were discussed in terms of ownership and licensing. This will prove to be a key issue for me to overcome when i begin to receive submissions as the work i plan to feature within my publication will not be my own. In order to keep legal and ensure my submittors know exactly what I plan to do with their work and where they stand I have decided to include the Terms & Conditions of Submissions within the "Profile" blog, this way when I begin to receive submissions I can rest assure that they know what they are getting in to, this also gives peace of mind to the submittors.
A screen print of my Terms & Conditions is included below:

Aye-Aye Spy with my Little Eye

I happened to be in Glasgow this weekend, so what better opportunity to have a browse through the Aye Aye bookstore.

I Get By With A Little Help From My 3rd years

Today we had an informal but very informative chat with the courses 3rd years, splitting themselves into 3 groups relating to their preffered practice - illustration, material and video/photography, each group talked about their own practice and artists who have influenced their work.
I decided that the group I would find most informative and would relate most to my project was the illustration group.
Kicking off was Aron Klein whose work involves and urban graffiti style utillised in a more artistic manner. Highlighting the work of David Ellis, Aron talked about how he enjoyed the element of the video being the artwork and the painting being shown going through several transformations that without being documented within the video would be lost. An example of David Ellis' work is shown below, I was really impressed by the amount of time and dedication that must have gone into it's creation.

Artwork David Ellis from Gülşah Bengü Pekesin on Vimeo.

Jack Scales talked about a major influence of his, Bristol based illustrator Jack Hudson whose quirky illustration style and links with the music industry have seen his work popping up on posters around the country.


The artist known as CAKE was up next, her practice involves lot's of computer generated design, her current work has been focussed on the hexagonal patterns found in beehives, which she is using to highlight the plight of the bee and raise awareness for it's cause.



She is heavily influenced by Berlin design firm "Ice Cream For Free" which have similar methods of practice:

To The Bookies

Here are the results of todays bookmaking sessions where we learnt some relevant basic techniques which we could use to create our publications for the Artist Book fair.
The top pictures show the Concertina which involves no sewing just specific folding to created the 'concertina' effect. The last 2 photos depict the japanese stitch which although involving sewing is very simple to do, so long as you ensure the thread is sewn tightly unlike mine!
Concertina







Japanese

Where to next?

This afternoon we had a very intersting and enlightening talk from Sheffield based designer David Appleyard who graduated from Sheffield Hallam University with a BA (Hons) and MA in Industrial Design. Appleyard's talk was not only interesting due to his work being heavily reliant on it's collaborative element, but also it was reassuring to note how successful he has become since leaving university, proving it is possible, but requires a lot of hard work.

Flickr

With all the technology available nowadays it would be a shame not to take advantage of it.
Flickr is a website I have used many times in the past as a way to archive my photography online. Flickr has a feature which enables user's to create their own pool which members of the group can contribute to.
I have decided to create my own Flickr group:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/profile-amatterofidentity



Although I am dubious as to how many submissions will be provided this way I feel that it is still worthwhile to have as many alternative ways in which to submit work.

It's a Book Jim... But not as we Know it

A busy and useful day today.
After a presentation with Yvonne and Cheryl in the morning which was also attended by the college's furniture course, aimed at further explaining just what forms Artist Book's can take including looking at a vast variety of publications as documented below. I found this useful as many of the zine's displayed were by student's from last year's course, student's who are year earlier were faced with the same brief as ourselves and it was interesting to note the utcomes their work had reached.









After our briefing on the Book Fair, we furthered our research with a visit to the Art Market Leeds. Housed in a modest unit within the Merrion Market, the market has truly made the most of itself, using it's initiative to create a schedule of arty events that included an artists indoor picnic that was just concluding as we arrived.
After having a good scout around for publications of interest, I had a chat with the lady behind the counter about my project and helpfully agreed to post a link to my project's blog in the next newsletter.








Now onwards to Vernon Street where we were lucky enough to have the opportunity to meet with the college's keeper of the books and librarian in chief - Chris, to scour through the libraries extensive collection of Artist Books.
Ranging from publications purchased from alumini of the college all the way up to the colleges newest acquisition of the complete published works of land artist Richard Long.
This was a great chance to further expand the scope of my knowledge in regards to Artist Book's and instilled the feeling that anything is possible within this broad medium.



One of my favourites, 'Shuffle" by Christian Marclay is a enlarged pack of cards, but in place of suits, the set features a simple score on each card, the idea being that the cards are to be shuffled up and if musically inclined played in the order they are placed.







This was another ingenious example featuring an authentic chunk of the demolished Berlin Wall.







This book shows the theme of an artist book could be extremely simple, showing various typographic ways to display the title letters.





And our final stop of the day was to be introduced to Mick and Sarah at the print workshop, who are to give us a workshop on creating our own books in the next week or so. Showing us a wealth of construction methods and previous examples aimed at getting us to think of the type of book we'd like to create in the workshop. This was something to think about, i plan on taking examples along with me to explain the aesthetic i want to achieve.





A selection of Buckram swatches, oh the choices!

When is a Book not a Book?

Well? when it's a Cd Cover of course! Expanding the realms of what people expect from a product is something i'm more familiar with when talking about album covers, below are some great examples of how the physical experience of a product can be taken further than just a box for a Cd, which i feel could also be a applied to expanding the "book" format.

Before the age of Mp3's where you had to squint into your screen for album artwork, graphic designers had a full gatefold sleeve to play with. Using this to their advantage sleeve desginers became ever more inventive with the ways in which the music buying public could interact with their product with Andy Warhol famously adding peelable bannana's and unzippable jeans to his creations.

Below are a few notable examples of this craft:

Bright eyes casadagga:


Conor Oberst's Cassadaga featured a decodeable front cover complete with a free decoding tool which the viewer held to their eye in order to find symbols in the mysterious cover.

Here is a youtube link showing the decoder at work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIp8OVbF7zU



Beck - The Information

Beck's 'The Information' features a blank graph papered front and comes complete with various sticker packs encouraging buyers to create their own album cover for it.
Some fan's interpretations can be found below:






Pixies - Minotaur - Box Set

Quite often when albums are reissued they are aimed specifically at the super-fans who view any item in their favourite artist's discography as a "must - have"
This one is to celebrate the 20th anniversary of "Pixies - Minotaur" album. Featuring a collaboration between the men behind the original albums art direction Vaughan Oliver and photographer Simon Labalestier.



Radiohead - In Rainbows

Again similar to the 'Pixies' box set is this collection from 'Radiohead' for the physical release of their album 'In Rainbows'. Famously a "pay what you want album" on it's original download release, the band had the liberty of create a package that only fans would be inclined to buy. Available on a number of format's, this deluxe addition features all the formats in one collection.



Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin III

Led Zeppelin's iconic 3rd album sleeve featured the artwork of Jimmy Page's college friend Zacron. Inspired by crop circles the Vinyl features a rotatable collection of images that can be seen through various windows on the cover.